1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a connector socket and, more particularly, to a connector socket that may receive external ATA (eSATA) or universal serial bus (USB) plugs and that is compact.
2. Description of Related Art
Computer periphery equipment such as flash drives, portable hard disc drives or external CD-ROM drives is connected with the computer through the universal serial bus (USB) connector socket or Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 1394 (IEEE1394) protocol. The most popular connector socket is USB 2.0 at present. Almost all computers have the USB 2.0 connector socket, and the upper limitation of a data transmission speed of the USB 2.0 connector socket is as high as 480M bps.
With the development of portable peripheral equipment, the data transmission speed is higher and higher. The invention of the hard disc external box makes the hard disc drive portable, and the speed of USB 2.0 is not insufficient to support the high speed transmission between the hard disc external box and a computer. Therefore, a new connector socket, external serial ATA (eSATA), which has a data transmission speed up to 3G bps to satisfy the portable hard disc drive, has been developed recently. USB and eSATA connector sockets have similar structures, and each of them has a casing, a contact seat and multiple contacts. The casing has a cavity having an inner surface. The contact seat is formed on and extends forward from the inner surface of the cavity. The contacts are mounted on the contact seat. However, the USB and eSATA connector sockets are not compatible with other.
With regard to notebook computers, the USB connector socket is an essential element in almost notebook computers. Undoubtedly, the eSATA connector socket will be the next essential element on the notebook computers in the future.
However, incorporating the USB and eSATA connector sockets on a notebook computer occupies a mounting space in the notebook computer and would prohibit other elements such as an IEEE 1394 connector socket or an audio connector socket from being mounted on the notebook computer.
An improved connector socket is developed and has an eSATA interface and a USB interface stacked vertically. However, mounting such a connector socket into the notebook computer increases the thickness of the notebook computer, which makes the computer not compact and unmarketable.
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention provides a connector socket for eSATA and USB plugs to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.